There is yet one other liturgical play belonging to the Christmas season, which for the future development of the drama is the most important of all. This is the _Prophetae_[192]. It differs from the _Quem quaeritis_, the _Peregrini_, the _Pastores_, and the _Stella_ by the large number of performers required, and by the epical mode of its composition. Its origin, in fact, is to be sought in a narrative, a _lectio_, not a chant. The source was the pseudo-Augustinian _Sermo contra Iudaeos, Paganos et Arianos de Symbolo_, probably written in the sixth century, but ascribed throughout the Middle Ages to the great African[193]. A portion of this sermon was used in many churches as a lesson for some part or other of the Christmas offices[194]. The passage chosen is in a highly rhetorical vein. _Vos, inquam, convenio, O Iudaei_ cries the preacher, and calls upon the Jews to bear witness out of the mouths of their own prophets to the Christ. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Moses, David, Habakkuk, Simeon, Zacharias and Elisabeth, John the Baptist;—each in turn is bidden to speak, and each testimony is triumphantly quoted. Then: _Ecce, convertimur ad gentes_. Virgil—_poeta facundissimus_—is pressed into the service, for the famous line of his fourth eclogue: ‘iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto[195],’ Nebuchadnezzar, who saw four walking in the furnace, and finally the Erythraean Sibyl, whose acrostic verses on the ‘Signs of Judgement’ first appear in the writings of Eusebius[196]. The dramatic form of this _lectio_ possibly led to its being chanted instead of read, and distributed between several voices in the manner of the Passions from Palm Sunday to Good Friday[197]. At any rate in the eleventh century there appears in a Limoges manuscript a metrical adaptation in which it has been wholly converted into a dramatic dialogue[198]. This Limoges _Prophetae_ follows the sermon pretty closely in its arrangement. A _Precentor_ begins: ‘Omnes gentes congaudentes, dent cantum laetitiae! deus homo fit, de domo David, natus hodie.’ He addresses a couplet each _Ad Iudaeos_, _Ad Gentes_, and then calls in turn upon each of the prophets, who reply, Virgil pronouncing his line, the Sibyl the _Iudicii Signum_, and the others a couplet or quatrain apiece. They are nearly identical with the personages of the sermon: Israel is added, Zacharias disappears, and the order is slightly different. Finally the _Precentor_ concludes: ‘Iudaea incredula, cur manens adhuc inverecunda?’